Celebrity Fitness Trainer in Coma After Assault

ATLANTA -- A celebrity fitness trainer remained in a coma Thursday after he was severely beaten in a downtown Atlanta parking lot, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Darius Miller, 41, was escorting Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin’s two daughters about 2:50 a.m. Wednesday when a group of men tried to videotape the women as they left a nightclub, according to his cousin, Ken Miller.

“Darius tried to stop them,” Ken Miller, who was not present when the attack occurred, told the newspaper on Thursday. “Ten guys ganged up on him. They beat him until he was unconscious.”

James Polite, an Atlanta police spokesman, echoed Ken Miller’s account of the attack, saying the men turned on Miller “and physically assaulted him to the point where he had to go to the hospital.”

“He was just outnumbered and overpowered,” Polite told the newspaper.

In a police report released to the media, no information on witnesses was included, and the description of the fight said only that the assailants were “videotaping individuals walking to and away from the parking lot.”

Darius Miller worked at an Atlanta gym for eight to 10 years before starting his own business about five years ago, Ken Miller told the newspaper. Ken Miller also said that Darius Miller has trained pop star Usher, Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Takeo Spikes, former New York Giants player Carlos Emmons and “The Cosby Show” star Keisha Knight Pulliam, who visited Miller in the hospital Wednesday, his cousin said.